He completed his high school education at the Diyarbakır High School.
His university education was interrupted by two arrests (1952-1953)
while he was a student of philosophy at the Ankara University Faculty of
Letters, due to his protesting against Article 141 of the Turkish
Sentencing Code. The poems he published in journals between 1940 and
1955 were widely read and well received. He achieved a special place in
Turkish literature due to the original lyricism and imagination of his
poetry, which was influenced by Anatolian folk cultures. He published
only one collection of poetry. Ahmet Oktay's study (Karanfil ve
Pranga [Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1990]) on Ahmed Arif's poetry is
the most detailed criticism and analysis of his work. POETRY:
Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim (1968).
THIRTY-THREE BULLETS
I
This mountain is Mt. Mengene
When dawn breaks open over Van
This mountain is Nimrod's child
When dawn breaks open across from Nimrod's mountain
On one Side, the Caucasian horizon, avalanches grow
On your other side, the prayer rug is Persia
Glaciers on the peaks are like bunches of fruit
Fugitive pigeons stand at waterside
And a herd of deer
And a flock of partridges...
No one can deny their heroism
They were undefeated in one-on-one combat
The loyal sons of this region for millennia
How are we going to break the news now
This is not a flock of cranes
Nor a constellation up in the sky
This is a heart pierced by thirty-three bullets
Thirty-three fountains of blood
No longer flowing,
Now a lake on this mountain...
II
A rabbit jumped up from the bottom of the hill
Its back is speckled
Its belly white as milk
Poor thing is a pregnant mountain hare
Its heart leaps to its mouth
Seeing it any man can give up hunting
It was a desolate hour a lonely time
A spotless, stark naked dawn
One of the thirty-three looked
Hunger's void weighed down on his stomach
His long hair and beard were messed up
Lice crawled on his collar
He saw that he had been shot in the arms
A hero with an infernal heart
Looked first at the pitiful hare
Then looked back there.
Suddenly his dainty carbine came to his mind
Sullen under his pillow.
Then he thought of the colt he had brought from the Harran
plains
The colt's mane had blue beads,
His forehead had a blaze,
Three of his fetlocks were white
His cantering generous and brisk
With the chestnut mare
How the two of them had taken flight in front of Hozat!
If he weren't helpless and tied down like this,
If there were no cold barrel of a gun propped in his back,
He might have hidden up on the heights.
These friendly mountains know a man's worth,
And Heaven knows, these hands will never bring shame,
These hands can masterfully fell with the first shot
The ash of the burning cigarette
Or the viper's forked tongue
Sparkling in the sun...
These eyes which had never been duped, not even once,
Knew full well the doomsday of the passes waiting for an
avalanche
And the soft snowy treachery
Of the cliffs...
There was no escape
He was going to get shot
Final orders had been issued:
Blind reptiles were to gobble up his eyes
And vultures his heart.
III
I got shot
In a desolate mountain pass
At the time of the morning prayer
I'm lying here
Stretched out, drenched in blood...
I got shot
My dreams are darker than the nights
I try to find a good omen but it's no use
They have taken my life before my time was up
It would take volumes to tell my story
A pasha sends an order in code
And I get shot without due process, without an inquest.
Brother, write all about my plight word for word
Lest others think it might be hearsay
What I have in my shattered mouth
Are not rosy teats
But dumdum bullets...
IV
They executed the orders to kill.
They dipped in blood
The blue haze of the mountain
And the half-asleep breeze of dawn.
Then they stacked their guns
Slowly they frisked our bodies.
They turned my crimson sash
Of Kirmanshah weave inside out,
They went away taking with them
My rosary and my cigarette case
Which were gifts from Persia...
We are kith and kin, blood relations
For centuries we have exchanged brides
With the villages and nomads on the other side
We are neighbors, kissing cousins
Our hens mingle together
All this not because we don't know any better
But because of poverty,
We have never warmed up to passports
This is the crime that has caused them to murder us
We have been branded
Smugglers
Highwaymen
Traitors...
Brother, write all about my plight word for word
Lest others think it might be hearsay
What I have in my shattered mouth
Are not rosy teats
But dumdum bullets...
V
Shoot, bastards
Shoot all you want,
I won't die so easily,
My embers are alive in the ashes,
I still have a lot to say in my guts
To those who'll get my meaning.
My father lost his eyes on the Urfa front
And his three brothers
Who were like three slender cypresses,
Three hunks of mountain still yearning to live.
That's when our kith and kin, the sons of the tribe
Were fighting the bullets of the French
From fortresses, hills and minarets.
My younger uncle Nazif
His moustache barely out yet
Handsome
Light-footed
Good horseman
He said: "Shoot, brother
Shoot:
This is the day to defend our honor"
And reared his horse on its hind legs...
Brother, write all about my plight word for word
Lest others think it might be hearsay
What I have in my shattered mouth
Are not rosy teats
But dumdum bullets...
Translated by Talât Sait Halman
MY UNFORGETTABLE ONE
You bloomed,
Blue and green,
In my loneliness.
You bloomed,
Bright red, speckled and pure;
I could rise above griefs and treasons.
To go,
To go into exile in your eyes.
To be locked up,
To be locked up in the cage in your eyes.
Wherever they may be!
It isn't "To be or not to be,"
Or "Cogito ergo sum" either;
The real business is to understand the inevitable:
The avalanche that cannot be stopped,
The stream that flows forever.
To drink,
To drink the moonlight in your eyes.
To attain,
To attain life's miracle in your eyes.
Wherever they may be!
Since your soul was concealed within my soul,
When the executioner tightened the rope,
It was our love that flowed into the night,
Instead of blood.
To feel,
To feel the gallows in your eyes;
To become silent,
To become silent in your eyes;
Those razor-sharp
eyes of yours.
Translated by Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy
YOUR LOVE FOR ME
Your love has not forsaken me
I was starving, I was thirsty;
The night was dark and treacherous
The soul was desolate and wordless;
The soul was shattered...
And my hands were in manacles,
I had no cigarettes, no sleep,
But your love has not forsaken me.
Translated by Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy
LOCKED-UP
Hey stone wall! Do you know?
The iron gate, the black window?
My pillow, my bunk, my chains,
The sad picture in my cache,
For whose sake I almost died,
Do you know?
My visitor has brought me green onions,
My cigarettes have the aroma of cloves.
Oh, the spring has come in the mountains of my land.
Translated by Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy
[From An Anthology of Turkish Literature, Edited by
Kemal Silay]
